


She Needed Adventure

by stellalunalovegood



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Coming Out, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, First Crush, Fluff, Pining, Slow Burn, Swearing, academic rivalry, their not really enemies but idk if rivals to friends to lovers is a thing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 12:53:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11532645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellalunalovegood/pseuds/stellalunalovegood
Summary: Since she showed up exactly on time to their first third year Arithmancy class, Hermione Granger had been stunning Padma Patil. Of course, the nature of the class did not warrant any defensive spells, here we are talking about a different type of charm.





	She Needed Adventure

Since she showed up exactly on time to their first third year Arithmancy class, Hermione Granger had been stunning Padma Patil. Of course, the nature of the class did not warrant any defensive spells, here we are talking about a different type of charm. Hermione was stunningly bright, stunningly sharp, and stunningly good at nearly everything she attempted. She was the fiercest competition Padma had ever encountered, and she was infuriating. 

During their shared classes, the girls’ quills raced each other across their parchment, their eyes through their books, and their hands into the air. They fought for the first answer to every question, the first solution to every equation, and the first conjugation of every ancient verb. 

Padma had been competing all her life— with her twin, her legions of cousins, and later her classmates. Her fellow members of the house of wit and knowledge were formidable, naturally, but the houses known for hard work and ambition were not to be underestimated either. She learned from her classmates, and taught them some things herself, but none of them burned as bright as Hermione Granger. 

As if to further taunt her, Hermione always chose the seat in front of Padma’s. Just another way Hermione was ahead of her. Her curls brushing against the edge of Padma’s desk were a resting reminder of Hermione’s excellence. 

Padma’s frustration lead to fixation and fascination. The tight spirals of Hermione’s hair found their way scribbled onto Padma’s notes among formulas. Padma’s quill had always been prone to wandering as she listened to her professors; her notes looked half like study material and half stream-of-consciousness art. It was not unusual to find sketches of her classmates on her parchment. It was rather unexpected when Hermione’s dark curls started overtaking the margins of her charms homework. That pivotal mid-February day, Padma looked up from her parchment and out the window of the Ravenclaw common room, and muttered softly, but with emphasis, “fuck.”

That night she stared at the constellations painted on the ceiling above her bed, trying to concentrate on the position of Venus, but found her mind flooded with Hermione’s vibrant eyes and sparkling smile instead. Padma felt her cheeks growing hot thinking of the girl’s rich brown skin. Giving up on sleep, Padma stormed as quietly as one can do such a thing down to the common room. 

After a few minutes staring out one of the wide windows, Padma decided real stars were hardly any more distracting than the ones painted on the ceiling. There were plenty of books in her trunk, and even more on the common room bookshelf, but Padma decided more than knowledge she needed adventure. So she shrugged on her cloak and slipped out into the dark hall. 

The brass eagle woke up when she shut the door, but was apparently to drowsy to do more than glare at her. She passed the Grey Lady on the way down the spiral staircase; being known for her silence, Helena only looked at Padma, smiling knowingly when she noticed the girl’s still flushed cheeks. At the bottom of the staircase, Padma tapped her wand on a sculpture of Minerva (the Roman goddess of wisdom, not the head of Gryffindor house and professor of Transfiguration). The statue stepped aside, revealing a passage that would lead to the library. Padma ducked inside, and the statue stepped back, throwing Padma into complete darkness. She cast _lumos_ to navigate the tunnels until she saw a wall of pages. She pulled out the second book from the left and the shelf swung open to the library. 

Padma looked at the room, empty of people but alive with words, and smirked, doubting Hermione ever got the library all to herself. The Hogwarts library had mostly study material, textbooks and academic journals, but there was an alcove towards the back that held books of old folk stories and legends from every part of the wizarding world. She glanced over volumes of Greek epics and Shakespearean plays, her eyes resting on the well worn binding of the _Bhagavad Gita_. She took the book to her favorite armchair and prayed that the Mahabharata war could distract her from her crush. 

~*~

Padma woke up the next morning to find Madame Pince tapping her nail against the open pages of the _Bhagavad Gita_. Padma squinted, trying to make sense of her surrounding and the sharp pain in her neck. It took a few moments to shake away the disorientation of waking up in an unusual place, giving the librarian a head start on her reprimand.

“What are you doing dead asleep in the library at 7:00 am.? I remind you, curfew is 9:00 at night. You’re quite aways from the Ravenclaw dormitories, Miss Patil. Am I supposed to believe you came down here for an early morning nap time story?”

“Er, no, you’ll understand, it’s just, um…” Padma was finding it more difficult to talk her way out of trouble coming from four hours uncomfortable sleep.

Madame Pince sighed. “You’ll be late for breakfast,” she said, “since I can’t actually prove you did anything wrong, you won’t be in trouble.” She put Padma’s book back on the shelf. “You’re lucky I sympathize with bookworms.”

Padma thanked the librarian as many times as she could before sprinting back to Ravenclaw tower to get dressed. After she had pulled on her robes and splashed some water in her face, Padma ran back down towards the Great hall. She stood to the side of the corridor until she saw Parvati. 

“Oh!” Parvati exclaimed, startled as her twin had grabbed her arm and pulled her into an empty classroom. 

“Padma, what is it?” her sister said as Padma closed the door behind them.

“I need to talk to you,” said Padma. “How did you know how you felt about Lavender?”

Parvati had told Padma how she had fallen for her best friend that year at Christmas. She wasn’t necessarily expecting the confession, but Padma had not been surprised. She had seen them walking to class together, pinkies entwined and giggling. Padma wasn’t quite sure if her sister’s tender love for her best friend had anything in common with the fierce heat she felt at the thought of Hermione Granger. But ever the Ravenclaw, Padma was hungry for every bit of wisdom her sister could offer.

“Oh that,” Parvati smiled shyly, “it’s more feeling than knowing, really.”

Padma refrained from rolling her eyes. How was anything as abstract and unpredictable as a feeling going to help her? But Parvati continued.

“I guess, she always makes me really happy, whenever I’m with her or when I’m thinking about her.”

Did Hermione make Padma happy? It was hard to say. She made her feel more energetic, brighter, stronger. She made her feel alive. 

“Also a little nervous, like I want to impress her I guess. I want her to think I’m pretty, clever, funny, or whatever.”

Padma knew she wanted to impress Hermione, but was nervous the right word for the dragon-sized butterflies feeling she got in her stomach whenever she spoke to the Gryffindor? The near muteness trying to think of something intelligent to say to her, the sudden consciousness of her fly-away hairs and wrinkled robes… 

“And I just, I don’t know, I really like her a lot. I like her hair, her eyes, her laugh, her smile. I like the way she leans in close to me before she tells me something, I like how she’ll hold my hand when we’re in a crowded place.”

Padma frowned. She thought of Hermione’s hair in the dark massive shape of a stormcloud, and just as untamable. Her eyes deep, dark, and intense; the black-brown color of espresso but alight with incomparable brilliance and determination. Her laugh, rich and heavy in her chest, reminding her of the smooth music of the cello. Her smile baroque with her big, white front teeth and her plump lips stretched into elegant curves. Padma thought about how Hermione bit her lip whenever she paused to think, and how she would gesture excitedly when she explained something she’d read about.

Parvati looked at her sister’s expression for only a moment before gasping, “Oh my _gosh!_ You like someone, don’t you?”

Padma looked determinedly at the floor but her twin was not so easy to fool. 

“Who is it? Is it someone I know? You have to tell me!”

Padma became fascinated with a loose thread on the sleeve of her robe. Parvati had always been much more open when expressing her feelings. When they were small, Parvati drew portraits of her parents and her sister surrounded by hearts, while Padma kept to the more neutral subject of the flowers in their garden. But still, that didn’t mean Padma didn’t want to share this with her sister.

“I don’t even know for sure it’s just…” She glanced at her sister then quickly back to her sleeve, “There’s a girl in Ancient Runes and Arithmancy who’s really… interesting”

Padma put her hand to Parvati’s mouth to muffle the shriek she anticipated. 

“Sorry,” they said in unison. Then Padma took over with another onslaught of questions.

“Only electives? You have Potions with Hufflepuffs and Herbology with Slytherins, don’t you? So she must be in Gryffindor! The only girl in Gryffindor mad enough to take Arithmancy is Hermione, oh my _God!_ You have a crush on Hermione!”

Padma shrugged, failing to hide the fierce blush taking over her cheeks. “I’m not even sure if that’s what it is! It’s just, she’s really smart and pretty and I just think she’s cool is all.”

Parvati giggled. “That’s how it sta-arts!” she sang, “you definitely like her!”

“Maybe,” Padma relinquished, “but it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a silly crush.”

Parvati raised an eyebrow, “it doesn’t seem silly to me.”

“Whatever,” said Padma moving towards the door, “we need to get to breakfast.”

Parvati didn’t say anything else, but grinned like the cheshire cat all the way to the Gryffindor table. Sure enough, as soon as she sat down, she turned to whisper to Lavender. Padma narrowed her eyes in irritation, but was relieved to see they were far from the Gryffindor of her interests. She sat across from her housemates, Michael Corner and Anthony Goldstein, but they shared a fairly quiet breakfast.

Padma walked with Michael and Anthony to Arithmancy, but she payed little attention to their discussion of this morning’s Prophet, only nodding and frowning occasionally for the appearance. She was much more preoccupied with what would happen in their classroom in a few minutes. Regardless of the nature of her feelings about Hermione, it would be nice to become better friends. Of course they would sometimes work together in class or meet studying in the library, but they were more smile-at-each-other-in-the-corridor friends than talk-about-our-greatest-fears-and-desires friends. 

Hermione was already sitting down in her usual seat when the three Ravenclaws walked in. standing in the doorway, Padma thought about what her sister would do: Parvati would stride across the classroom with poise and grace, hips swaying slightly, tossing her hair, and maybe even smiling in the other girl’s direction. When Padma stepped into the classroom, she suddenly found it much harder to walk, and needed to keep a sharp eye on the floor to be sure it wouldn’t disappear from beneath her. At last, she somehow managed to reach her desk without tripping over her own feet. She sat down with an exhale.

Hermione turned to her, eyebrows close together, “Are you feeling alright? You seem a bit, off, today,”

_Fuck._ Padma forced a smile and some words from her mouth, “I’m fine, just a little sleep deprived is all,” which wasn’t untrue.

“That essay about the different types of movement charms?” she asked. “It kept me busy all weekend.”

“Yes,” said Padma shuffling her feet under her desk, “there’s just so much to say about summoning versus propelling charms.”

Hermione widened her eyes and nodded earnestly. But before they could continue their conversation, Professor Vector stepped up to the blackboard, and Hermione turned back to face her. 

They enjoyed a brief lecture on obtaining a person’s character number from their birthdate before Professor Vector had them practice the method in pairs. As if briefly possessed by the spirit of her twin, Padma tapped Hermione’s shoulder to suggest they should be partners.

“My birthday is September 19, 1979,” Hermione began, “So that would be 9+1+9+1+9+7+9,”

“That’s 45,” Padma calculated, “which simplifies to nine.”

“A complete number,” said Hermione.

Padma nodded. “‘Nine represents completion and achievement to the fullest degree,’” she read from her notes. Of fucking course.

“Parvati and I were born on October 9,” Padma said to change the subject from Hermione Granger’s excellence, “So that’s 1+0 or just 1 I guess, so 1+9+1+9+7+9. 36.”

“That’s nine as well,” Hermione observed.

Padma looked intently at her calculations, as if expecting them to change, but Hermione’s nine and her own stood firm in the drying ink. 

“Oh,” Padma said, to her own dismay.

Hermione smirked, “Do you think that explains why we’re always neck and neck for top marks?”

Padma bit her lip, eyes still locked on the parchment, “Maybe but it doesn’t explain how you always end up ahead of me.”

“Bollocks,” said Hermione, “you kick my arse in Ancient Runes.”

Padma blushed, “I have an unfair advantage– I’m already multilingual.”

Hermione’s eyes widened, enquiring.

“I’m fluent in Hindi,” Padma answered, “and I can read Urdu but I can’t speak it.” 

“That’s wonderful, really,” said Hermione, eyes excruciatingly bright. “Do they correlate with any of the languages we study? Or is it more that you have a better understanding of language in general?” 

“A little bit, with languages in the Sanskrit family,” Padma suppressed a nervous laugh, “but it helps a lot knowing multiple alphabets.”

Professor Vector interrupted their conversation, striding to the front of the room and commanding the class’s attention. “For your homework,” she said, “I want numbers for yourself and five others by Thursday, with calculations. We will continue working with these in class.” 

When she was finished, Hermione leaned closer to Padma. “Do you think you could teach me?” She became aware of herself and moved back, rolling her quill between her fingers, “Or at least tell me about some of the connections?”

Padma felt as if the sun had taken up residence behind her breastbone. She smiled with all of its brightness. “Yeah,” she said breathily, “we could meet in the library.”

“Marvelous! I have a break after lunch on Friday. Does that work for you?”

“Yeah,” 

“Then it’s a date!” Hermione grabbed her bag and sprung towards the door, “See you then!” 

“See you then,” Padma exhaled.

Padma beamed all the way to Potions class. Even in the dungeons she felt like she was walking on air. She had a date with Hermione Granger! Albeit a study date, probably the least romantic type of date, but perfect for the two brightest girls in their year.

**Author's Note:**

> information about arithmancy:  
> http://www.beyondhogwarts.com/harry-potter/articles/an-introduction-to-arithmancy.html  
> https://sites.google.com/site/arithmancyhol/lesson1


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